Posted 03.30.2010 at 12:00 pm
6 Comments
2010 Toyota Prius
Courtesy Toyota
Responding to concerns about Toyota's recall of 8 million cars, President Obama has asked the National Academy of Science (NAS) and NASA to conduct a formal investigation of computer technology in cars. The NAS will oversee the broad program, while NASA will specifically examine computer-controlled acceleration in Toyota's Prius hybrid.
The NAS research panel will look into how electromagnetic interference, computer error, hardware and software design, human error, and a host of other factors can influence sudden acceleration and deceleration in cars controlled by computer. The NASA side will concentrate solely on how electromagnetic interference, not floor mats, human error, or faulty gas pedals, may have led to the sudden acceleration that instigated the recall.
Overall, the investigation will cost around $3 million, and ensure that Jay Leno has monologue fodder for the duration of the study.
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Seriously? Easiest 3 million NAS and NASA ever made.
"Just because one idiot agrees with another doesn't mean I will concede my point."
~Jim Labreck
Heh. As I've said before, this economy prospers on the ignorance of the general public.
Thats the biggest waste of money I have ever seen...
w00t! flying cars here we come? airbags that deploy around the entire vehicle before impact? Turbo Boost? oxygen scrubbers? silver catalyst pistons and hydrogen peroxide fuel? then recycling the exhaust from that engine into a secondary engine which burns H, or into a fuel cell? nvm. that type of engine produces superheated steam and oxygen.
quick, somebody start flooding the news with reports that martian ambassadors contacted Earth and want America to further develop their space program and come visit mars. if obama is seriously going to waste our money on everything that comes on the news for a few weeks. let me guess, he's the one that funded michael jackson's 'wrongful death' investigation too? i also think this is a bad idea, but good things could come of this if NASA wanted to improve the modern automobile industry. of course then cars would cost billions of dollars.. bad idea obama. nobody cares about f'd up cars. concentrate your funding on something more important, like the stargate project, or if you want to do something more possible, make nasa work on getting me to mars, where i can build us a subterranean facility, oxygenated by converting martian rust into iron and oxygen. dangle a huge hose from the moon to the earth's atmosphere. would that siphon the earth's atmosphere into space since the moon cant keep an atmosphere, and kill us all?
but could this mean better electric vehicles, solar powered, and robot mechanics?
I'd love to see more of the USA's overly inflated budget go to NASA... but not to test an import's brakes! :(
It's ok, the brakes are made by a US company as i recall.